Jail diversion plan an issue of expense

Work-release debate

Posted: Sunday, August 01, 2004

By Allison Floydallison.floyd@onlineathens.com

Leaders from all aspects of county government say Athens-Clarke County needs a work-release center to alleviate overcrowding in the Clarke County Jail and keep non-violent offenders working, rather than sitting in a jail cell.

Judges have sent the message for years, voters agreed in 1999, and members of the 2005 SPLOST Advisory Committee set aside some funding for the project when they recommended how to spend some $122 million in sales tax.

But the project has languished, partly because consultants recommended a building that cost 10 times more than another community spent. Consultants also predicted annual operating expenses that compare to a center for felony drug offenders and thieves, rather than deadbeat dads and misdemeanor drug users.

"The consultants reported we wanted a $3 million center in the old jail with all these programs and office space," said Superior Court Judge Lawton Stephens. "We have consistently asked for a basic work-release center."

Stephens and a team of other judges and prosecutors took the project to task, researching to prove what they have said for months - that the work-release center can be built for less than $1 million, instead of the $3 million version a consultant proposed.

Since late 2001, Athens-Clarke County has paid two jail consultants nearly $350,000 to judge the county's jail overcrowding and make educated guesses about how certain programs might cut that jail population.

But the proposals by Carter Goble Associates and Rosser International are just too expensive for citizens and officials, and both groups have questioned whether the consultants found the most economical plan.

Members of the citizen advisory committee found the $55 million jail too expensive to buy with sales tax and county commissioners later torpedoed the $3 million work-release plan.

All the while, judges have insisted that the consultants' plan for the work-release center is more expensive than it needs to be, and they finally pointed to Troup County as an example of what they want.

Troup County, in middle Georgia on the Alabama border, built a work-release center in 1996 for about $200,000, according to officials there.

Offenders in the 60-bed facility technically are on probation - not in custody, so the county doesn't pay health and dental costs - and everyone has a job. They pay $20 a day to stay there.

Work is the point of the whole program, said Director Shane Morris.

R.C. Rique/Staff

Inmates are shown in the Clarke County Jail last year. The jail, built in 1981, was meant to hold up to 338 inmates. As of July 1, the facility was housing 425 inmates.

Troup County brings in a drug-abuse counselor twice a week, but that's the limit of the self-help services of the county. Courts require many residents to go to Alcoholics Anonymous or some other counseling group, and two of them go to college.

"Our people work regular jobs, just like you and me," Morris said.

Guards test breath and strip-search residents when they arrive every night, but the door is never locked - probationers can walk away, but they'll go to jail when they're caught.

Few people make that choice. In 2000, 71 percent completed their sentence without leaving, failing a drug or alcohol test, refusing to pay the daily room-and-board fee or violating some other condition of probation.

It costs $120,000 a year to run the program after fees, compared to a $750,000 estimate here.

The cost of building the facility is dramatically different here, as well. While Troup County built a simple, barracks-style building, consultants working for Athens-Clarke planned to renovate the existing Clarke County Jail with its pod design of cells for $3.2 million.

"They must be looking at a fancy building made out of marble," joked Morris.

The state diversion center in Athens comes close to the operating costs estimated by the consultants and county staff, but that facility houses and works to rehabilitate felons.

Even the director of that center supposes a work-release center for people convicted of misdemeanors wouldn't call for the intensive counseling that the state center uses.

"I'm not saying that programming isn't important; it is," said Clarke Arick, superintendent of the 75-bed Athens Diversion Center, where 25 workers house and counsel felons who go to jobs during the day. "Misdemeanor offenders have issues - addiction issues, mental health issues - that could use counseling."

But he doesn't expect misdemeanor offenders need the intensive, in-house programming used in the state facility.

Carter Goble Associates counted on some of those types of employees when planners estimated the staffing and cost necessary to run a diversion center, said Robert Green, the consultant in charge of the needs assessment Athens-Clarke bought in 2001.

Those were the instructions the consultant took from a committee of county managers and jail administration, Green said, defending the 14 full-time employees and net $600,000 cost the consultant estimated in 2003 report. That annual operating cost is on par with the cost of the state's intensive program for felons, according to budget numbers from that center.

Faced with the choice of cutting all funding for the diversion center or accepting a cost estimate that they suspect is too high, commissioners told county managers to draw up a realistic cost proposal for the diversion center - essentially redoing the consultants' work.

Representatives of the county manager's office met with judges and Solicitor General Ralph Powell last week to review their concept of a work-release center and try to scale down the cost estimate, which should be complete by the time commissioners vote on the $122 million in sales tax Tuesday.

"It really doesn't matter what Troup County paid," said County Manager Alan Reddish. "The real question is, what is the cost of building a facility in Athens-Clarke County to meet the needs of the judges in this community?"